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Imogen Tear Award Winning Actress |
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Actress Imogen Tear just turned fourteen years old and she has already
won several awards and when you are in a conversation with her she
sounds like she has been at this for years. In fact, she has been acting
for years, not many years, but the past five years. Throughout the
conversation you are also reminded of something else that she is a
teenager and she still sees the world through the eyes of a teenager and
in a very positive way. She defaults to superlatives when describing the
people who are her friends and while talking with enthusiasm about the
television and movie sets on which she has worked. She also does
something else that immediately stands out and that is that she
expresses gratitude often for the opportunities that she has been given,
for her family and for other actors who have helped her along the way.
She talks about winning the Young Entertainer’s Award for best actress
in a television series (awarded
to those between the ages of five and twenty-one). Recently, she
also won a Joey Award for Best Lead Actress in a television role (an
award, which is also given to youth actors).
“I won the award for my role as Hattie in
When Calls the Heart and it
was an incredible experience. It was my first time ever going to LA and
the experience was totally amazing!
I never go anywhere thinking that I am going to win otherwise I will
always disappoint myself. Even after I win I remind myself that awards
are the result of hard work. It was pretty amazing, because it was my
first award ceremony ever and winning on top of that was super cool. I
was quite surprised to win something, because there were so many people
there and some of the people that I was up against were in shows that
were really well-known. I went whoa. When I won, I was like are you sure
you have the right girl? That was a night that I will never forget!”
My character Hattie moved to Hope Valley and everyone is very welcoming
to her. Hattie is not very nice and so Elisabeth tries to dig deeper,
because it is not very nice having a mean person in the school. She
realizes this is how Hattie is just dealing with her friend Jamie who
died. After Elizabeth talks to her everything starts to get better.”
We wondered how Imogen Tear felt about playing a mean character and she
says, “It was nice, but in one of the scenes I really felt bad, because
I had to throw one of the character’s beloved bears on the ground. I
felt so bad. It is definitely a lot more fun to play a mean person,
because you have that edge that most good characters do not experience.”
This is Imogen Tear’s third season appearing on
When Calls the Heart and at
the time of our interview the show was shooting its fifth season.
She says about the experience, “When
Calls the Heart is the set on which I have had the most fun in a
different way. With When Calls
the Heart there are so many kids there and you are not sitting there
lonely. I have a lot of friends on the set and I would not have seen
them any other places (that I go), because they live just far enough
away that it is not practical to go and see them.
It is fun, because they always think of new ideas and new plots. It is
also nice, because I think (eventually) they will tie in a new invention
since it is back in the day. I can just see that happening.”
Imogen Tear’s mother Nancy joined us for the interview and she says,
“This has been Imogen’s longest experience on a film set. She has really
grown up with those kids and it is quite a magical friendship that they
have, because everyone has grown up in Hope Valley (where the series is
set).”
Earlier this fall CBS aired the miniseries
Somewhere Between and one of
the central characters of the show was Colleen DeKizer played by Rebecca
Staab and she had this to say about Imogen Tear, “I love Imogen!! Ever
since the very first read-thru, when the cast sat down to read episodes
one and two, I was blown away by Imogen. What an incredible
actress. She is smart, talented, and loveable. She is magnetic.
I loved her as Ruby on Somewhere
Between. She melted hearts with her innocence and vulnerability and
she held us close with her commitment and drive. I am so glad that
I got to work with her, and I look forward to more opportunities!”
Imogen Tear talks
about her experience on Somewhere
Between, “It was super big, super amazing and super fun. We went to
a lot of different film locations and we went to houses that were
incredibly big and grand. The sets were really incredible. The cool
thing is that we went to all of these little places that we didn’t even
know about before. They were so incredible that I went, how did I not
know that this was here?
We had become such a family, the cast and the crew. We were tearing up
and so sad that the whole experience was coming to an end. They were
tears of happiness, because it was such a good experience. There was all
the action with helicopters and so many stunts. I had never really been
on a film set that had that much action that I was a part of. One of the
scenes that I was in was a fight scene and I had never been in a fight
scene. That was just full on and I was like what! This is crazy! It all
came together and it was all incredible.
Nancy joins the conversation again, “The fight scene that Imogen is
talking about is the one with Rebecca (Staab).”
Imogen continues, “Everyone was nice and Rebecca was incredible. I could
really tell that she is such an amazing person. We were at the part in
one scene when she entered the scene and we were totaling chilling and
having a blast.”
The times that I talked to Paula (Patton who played Laura Price) she was
always smiling. She was always so happy and she always gave off that
kind of a vibe, which made everyone happy too. At the first read through
Paula said we are going to have such a great time.
She also refers to Devon Sawa as being “super spectacular,” raved about
Catherine Barroll who played Ruby’s grandmother Grace Jackson and she
formed a bond with her on and off camera.
About Noel Johansen who played Ruby’s father she says, “When we went to
go visit him (his character Danny
Jackson) he was in prison. He was always happy and he made an
effort. He would come to me and say, so you are my kid and we talked
about things that we might have in common. He said sometimes I will rub
the back of my head with my hands, as a way of calming myself down. Ruby
couldn’t really process things right and she might curl up or block or
she would tense up. I it helped that we were on the same page.”
“Aria Birch (Serena Price) was always full of life and whenever you saw
her she was smiling. Just thinking about her makes me smile, because
there was never a day when she wasn’t happy. That takes a lot for a
young actress (a child actress). She was on set a lot. She had so many
lines in the show and it is incredible that she could stuff all of that
into a brain (especially) with coming home late and getting up early.
She was always happy,” she says.
Since 2015 it has become progressively busier for Imogen Tear with TV
movies, ‘Tis the Season for Love,
Magic Stocking, Evil Men and
My Sweet Audrina. She has also appeared as a regular on the
television series The Magicians,
with guest appearances on The 100
and What We Once Were.
How does a teenage girl whose star is rapidly rising stay grounded and
have a normal or close to normal teenage life?
“When I leave the set I think to myself I want to be a normal person
now. My mom is really strict on what time I go to bed. Most kids go to
bed later, but I have to go to bed at eight or nine, so that I get a
good sleep in case an audition pops up. I stay with my group of friends
and we hang out all of the time. We go to school and we have fun. Also,
I don’t tell people at my school that I act. When they ask, I don’t
really tell them. I am quite humble about my acting, but also I don’t
want everyone in my school to know, because then I would (hear all of
the time) oh what are you in? Since I haven’t told anyone it also
impacts how I feel about being normal. Some of my friends come up to me
and they ask why I was away? Were you filming? They know, but the rest
of the people come up to me and ask why I away? They bombard me (with
questions). If that was the reality (that everybody knew) I wouldn’t
have that break and have a normal kind of high school experience.
I go to a normal high school and last year I didn’t have a tutor, but
this year I will most likely have a tutor. I do miss a lot of schooling,
so I have to catch up a lot,” she says.
As for the approach she takes to acting Imogen Tear says, “All of the
parts that I ever had I got to the point when I could just play it. To
get to that point you have to think about the character, how she is in
the scene and how to work that kind of emotion. Once you get to that
point it is really easy to be that character. None of them were really
hard to play, because I could get to the point when I could just be
them.”
Having now worked on a couple of Hallmark projects she says, “I like
working with Hallmark, because they always have family friendly content
and you don’t have to worry about anything. It always makes you feel
better a little bit. It is really sweet. When you get really attached to
the characters and something goes badly for them you start to feel like
this is no good, because you have become so fond of the characters. I
think that is a really nice touch. Hallmark has really cute, nice and
pleasant sets. When I was working on
Magic Stocking everything was
super cute. Everything was just wow. For
When Calls the Heart
everything was very accurate as well. All of the props were (authentic
for that time). All of the scripts are interesting and the people are
nice. You don’t have to worry that they won’t be family friendly.”
As for how she first got into acting Imogen Tear says, “One of my
brother’s friends was in a commercial and I saw the commercial. I didn’t
understand that there were actors, that you could audition and be in
commercials and that you could be on television. I went home and I said
hey mom can you sign me up for this acting thing? If you do commercials
you get to fly to Mexico or Hawaii or places.
I kept on asking for two years and then my mom thought am I holding
Imogen back from anything? What if she is really meant to do this? Then
her next thought was, we will give this a try and she will get over it.
She signed me up and then I got an agent. That was pretty cool and I got
auditions. At first I did a lot of student movies to fill up my resume.
It wasn’t the real deal, but I was also doing something. One of the
films that I was in was called
Butterfly and it got into the Cannes Film Festival. The student films were fun. I got my first paying job one year into acting and it was a little tea commercial. It was fun, because we went into the forest (for the shoot). After that I got little bits and bobs. Then I got My Sweet Audrina and that was a big one. I was like whoa this is going to be a big film."
“I think the most important thing that I learned (so far) is being
professional, but still be you at the same time,” she says.
Imogen Tear also says, “It has got to the point as an actor that I know
parts don’t just come to you even if you are super famous you aren’t
just guaranteed parts, you still have to work for them and go and
audition for them.
We are here now (she starts to
laugh) and I didn’t get over the phase of wanting to act.”
Imogen Tear is a
fourteen year old teenage girl just like any other, oh with the
exception she is also one heck of a good actress and you do not have to
qualify that by saying she is a good teenage actress or young actress,
just leave it at she is a very good actress.
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Imogen
Tear continues on, as she talks about
When Calls the Heart, based
on Janette Oake’s book and about her role on the Hallmark Channel
production, “When Calls the Heart is based in 1910 and it is the journey
of (teacher) Elisabeth Thatcher (played by Erin Krakow) and it is about
all of the hardships the town (she lives in) has to face and her own
hardships. It is also about what happens in the town and what happens
with some of the children in the school where Elisabeth teaches. 